


secrets, about ourselves

by tamerofdarkstars



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Confessions, Derek "Nursey" Nurse is Unchill, Dex is stubborn and hungover, Dex just wants to lie down, Drunkenness, In Vino Veritas, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Sort Of, but alas, except not really, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-30 08:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20443640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamerofdarkstars/pseuds/tamerofdarkstars
Summary: “Let’s tell each other secrets,” he said again, “about ourselves. I’ll go first. I...”His stomach lurched, mouth tasting like the beer he’d drank and the shots he’d done downstairs. Nothing was making sense anymore and there was his roommate and best friend, sliding his stupid skinny jeans down his hips to change for bed and Dex couldn’t stand it anymore.“I hate you,” he mumbled.





	secrets, about ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> why yes, this is an entire fic based on and inspired by [this vine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBo26500o7U), thank you for noticing
> 
> also thank you ngozi for creating this webcomic it's pretty downright incredible

The party was still raging downstairs, but Dex was blissfully unaware of everything except the stairs he was painstakingly climbing and the warm press of Nursey into his side. Nurse’s arm was curled around his waist, that he knew, but everything else was fuzzy and difficult to hold on to for longer than a few seconds before it slipped away again.

Dimly, Dex was aware he was drunk. But the tiny voice in his subconscious that was trying its best to be the voice of reason was barely noticeable beneath the buzzing that filled his ears. He caught the toe of his boot on the edge of a step and stumbled, just a bit.

Nursey’s arm tightened around his waist.

“Easy there, Poindexter. Man, you are _so_ schwasted.”

Ah, Nursey. Nursey, Nursey, Nurse. Derek Nurse. Dex’s d-man. Dex’s roommate. Dex’s buddy. Amigo. Compadre.

Dex _liked_ Nursey.

Well, no. Dex hated Nursey. He hated his slow, lazy grin, the deep timbre of his voice. He hated catching glimpses of him tugging a shirt off in the locker room or in the bedroom before they went to sleep. He hated that Nursey would flop next to him on the couch and sit too close and laugh and tell him about lines of poetry that would sound stupid coming out of anyone else’s mouth.

But most of all, Dex hated waking up in the middle of the night alone in his bed when the person he wanted to curl up with more than anything was so close.

“’s _bullshit_,” Dex complained, trying to step up another step.

“Sure is, bro. Head’s up, we’re at the top.”

Dex put his foot down heavily and thoughts of Nursey slipped away for a second as every cognitive function was redirected towards getting himself into their bedroom.

It wasn’t until Nurse had deposited him on the bottom bunk that Dex’s brain woke up a bit.

“This… ‘s _your_ bed.”

“Yes,” Nursey said, crouching down next to him with a grin. His face was very close. Dex wanted it a bit closer. “But I’m not dragging your ginger ass up the ladder only to have you fall out of the top bunk.”

Dex blinked slowly at him. But…

“But _you’ll_ fall. Clumsy.”

Something softened in Nursey’s face and he reached out and smoothed Dex’s hair back off his forehead. It felt nice. Dex wanted that to keep happening but before he could say anything, Nursey’s hand had retreated. He pouted.

“It’s chill, Dex, I’ll be alright.”

“Y’ better.” Dex tried to roll over, found that that was far too much effort, and instead slipped a bit sideways until his head was hanging down off the side of the bed. Nursey had walked away and was on the other side of the room now, digging through one of the dressers. Dex took a moment to just look at him, to drink in his partner and teammate and to want.

He could tell him, right? For some reason, all the reasons Dex had been keeping his massive crush on Derek Nurse a secret didn’t seem to be all that important right now. Especially considering he couldn’t really remember any of them. Why hadn’t Dex just told Nursey? Holy shit, they could be making out _right now_.

“Nurse,” Dex said without bothering to sit up.

“Hm?”

“Nurse. Nursey.”

“What, Dex?”

“Let’s tell each other secrets.”

Nursey looked over at him, an amused grin playing around his lips. “Secrets? You got secrets over there, Poindexter?”

Dex clasped a hand to his chest. He had secrets. Didn’t everybody? That was a silly question. Of course he had secrets. Like the secret he was about to tell Nurse. The one where Dex sort of wanted to grab onto him and hold him close and never let him go.

“I got secrets. Secrets for _days_.”

“Ok, dude,” Nursey said, straightening up with a pair of basketball shorts in his hand. He was thumbing at the button of his jeans and Dex’s eyes snapped to the motion. “Lemme hear these oh-so-important Poindexter secrets. I promise to keep ‘em.”

Dex stared at him, upside down on the bed, his mind a blur of half-constructed thoughts. The world was spinning, just a little bit, and he was starting to feel less than spectacular.

“Let’s tell each other secrets,” he said again, “about ourselves. I’ll go first. I...”

His stomach lurched, mouth tasting like the beer he’d drank and the shots he’d done downstairs. Nothing was making sense anymore and there was his roommate and best friend, sliding his stupid skinny jeans down his hips to change for bed and Dex couldn’t stand it anymore.

“I _hate_ you,” he mumbled. The world was still weirdly spinning, even though he was pretty sure he was lying down, and Dex squeezed his eyes shut to make it stop.

He didn’t see the way Nursey froze, halfway through the motion of pulling his basketball shorts up. He didn’t see the injured expression flash across his face before the patented Derek Nurse Chill settled back into place.

“I know, dude,” Nurse said quietly, but Dex, already halfway to unconsciousness hanging off the bed, didn’t hear him.

Nurse walked to the side of the bed and gently rolled Dex over onto his side.

A muscle twitched in his jaw and instead of sweeping the sweaty hair back off Dex’s forehead like he wanted to, Nursey dragged his hand down his own face, sighing and crossing to the wall to put out the lights.

-

Morning dawned too bright, too early, and too much. Dex groaned into his pillow, feeling sick-slick nausea roiling through his gut and punching into the base of his throat.

He stumbled out of bed, nearly tripping over his own backpack, and froze in place, trying to force away the about-to-be-sick feeling with sheer willpower. His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth, too big and dry to be a part of him, and an incessant headache pounded behind his eyelids.

“Nurse?” he croaked, cracking his eyes open.

But the room was empty – the upper bunk had been slept in and wasn’t made, so Nursey had been there at some point. Dex squinted at the clock. It was much later than he usually woke up. Shit. Luckily it was still the weekend so he wasn’t missing any classes.

He rubbed at his temples and headed for the hallway.

When he finally made it to the kitchen, Bitty was there, humming to himself and putting together what looked like enough brunch for a small army. Or a band of hungover hockey players.

“Bits,” Dex croaked, slumping into a chair at the table. Bitty was by his side in a flash, a tall glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen in his hands.

“William Poindexter, you look like death.”

“Feel great,” Dex grunted. He downed a few pills and drank the glass of water as Bitty wandered around the kitchen, effortlessly producing food from what amounted to thin air, what with the state of their current groceries. There was a few moments of blessed silence before Dex glanced around the kitchen and realized, far too late, that it was strangely empty of his fellow teammates.

“Where is everyone?”

Bitty tilted his head at him. “Most are still sleeping. Derek--”

Something crossed Bitty’s face then and he quickly busied himself with the oven.

Dex frowned. “Derek? He wasn’t in our room.”

“He… went out.”

“Bits.”

“Don’t ask me questions!” yelped Bitty, half inside the oven at this point, peering into a ceramic baking dish.

Dex swallowed and tried desperately to remember what happened the previous night. He remembered drinking – that much was obvious, considering he had the worst hangover in recent memory – and he remembered stumbling up the stairs with Nursey pressed warm against him.

Then he remembered, with a rush of horror, his decision to tell Nursey everything.

To tell him how he _felt, _fucking _fuck, _what had he been thinking?

Everything after that was strangely blank – he couldn’t remember Derek’s reaction but, judging by Bitty’s refusal to look at him, it couldn’t have been good.

Dex swallowed. “Does he hate me?” he whispered, immediately imagining the worst.

Bitty turned around at the question, confusion creasing his brow. “Hate you? Dex, sweetie, why would _he _hate _you?_”

Dex frowned, confused by the weird emphasis Bitty was putting on his words. “Because… we’ve been living together for like, months now?”

Bitty examined him for a moment, expression puzzled. “Do you remember what happened last night?” he asked carefully.

Dex stared down into his water glass. He could feel heat creeping up his neck, sweat collecting on his pounding temples, and he wondered if Bitty would worry if he just crawled down off the chair and sprawled out on the floor. It looked cool and inviting down there. “I…”

Bitty put down the dish towel he’d been drying his hands with and crossed the kitchen, sitting down in the chair next to him. Dex swallowed, hard.

“I was… going to tell him. That I--”

Bitty sucked his bottom lip in between his teeth and patted the back of Dex’s hand. “Sweetie, you did tell him.”

Dex’s stomach dropped. “I did?”

Bitty sighed. “Look, he just needs some space, ok? You two don’t have to get along all the time, but we’re still a team. And--”

Dex frowned, the panic pulsing beneath his headache slowly giving way to more bleary confusion. “Wait. Bits. What did I tell him?”

Bitty looked away for a moment, then back at Dex. “He said… you told him you hated him.”

For a moment, Dex felt nothing. Then horror slammed into his chest, knocking the breath from his lungs, followed quickly by a creeping embarrassment. Oh hell. Of all the ways to fuck it up, of course his stupid brain had spit out the one thing that it had twisted so badly there was no way Dex was going to be able to explain it to Nursey.

Or look him in the eye again.

Dex groaned and buried his head in his hands. “I don’t hate him, Bits.”

“Well, sugar, I hate to break it to you, but drunk-William--”

“Bitty,” Dex croaked, lifting his head. “I think I’m in love with him.”

For a second, Bitty sat completely frozen. Then he blinked. “Oh dear. That does make things a bit more complicated. You probably should have led with that last night.”

Dex stared at the tiles beneath his shoes, tongue dry and head pounding, and wished he could just reset to twenty-four hours ago. “What am I going to do?’

“Well, you don’t really have much of a choice, I’m afraid.” Bitty put his hand on Dex’s knee. “I shouldn’t be saying this, but the poor boy looked pretty beaten up when he left this morning.”

Dex made a soft noise of dismay at the floor and Bitty squeezed his knee. “He went to go get coffee.”

Dex lifted his head and looked out the window. It looked extremely sunny. His throbbing head gave an extra pulse of pain in protest at the thought of walking outside, but Dex dragged himself to his feet with a groan.

“Do you have any sunglasses I can borrow?” he croaked, and Bitty smiled at him.

-

As it turned out, Dex didn’t have to walk all the way to Annie’s, because he ran into Nursey barely two hundred yards from the Haus, standing on the corner with his hands in his pockets, staring up into the leaves of the tree with a thoughtful look on his face.

Dex stopped, squinting behind his sunglasses, looking at his partner standing there staring up into the leaves, and opened his mouth.

“They’re not gonna change color in front of you, you know.”

Nursey jolted, visibly, at the sound of his voice and Dex felt his heart sink straight into his shoes. The look on Nursey’s face was one he didn’t recognize, tense and awkward and decidedly Not Chill. Dex’s head gave another painful throb.

“I’m not expecting them to,” Nursey said, a couple of beats too late.

Dex sighed. He couldn’t do this, couldn’t stand here and drag out the conversation they needed to have. They just needed to have it, be done with it, so Nursey would get that look off his face and Dex could go lick his wounds and nurse his hangover in private. “Nurse, listen--”

“Come on, man, don’t do this to me,” Nursey interrupted and Dex blinked, confused. Nursey’s voice was almost pleading. “Just. Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Dex asked. “Apologize?”

“Don’t _lie_ to me,” Nursey snapped and whoa, ok, now he was apparently pissed. Dex stared at him, feeling off-kilter and lost. Nausea roiled in the pit of his stomach and the world swam unpleasantly for a moment. Man, he really shouldn’t have had that last round of shots. He’d be lucky not to barf all over the sidewalk. He swallowed, feeling like he was trying to gulp down cotton.

“Nursey,” he croaked, and the expression on Nursey’s face changed from angry to concerned in the blink of an eye. “Normally I’d get pissed right back but I’m trying really hard not to puke right now, so can you just tell me what you’re talking about?”

Nursey took a step forward, then another, then closed the distance and put his hand on Dex’s forehead. It was cool and soft and Dex let out a soft whimper that made something in him cringe with embarrassment.

“Shit, bro,” Nursey murmured. “You’re clammy as fuck, what the hell are you doing out of bed so hungover?”

Dex closed his eyes behind the sunglasses. “You gonna let me tell you, or you gonna accuse me of lying again?”

Nursey was quiet for a moment, forcing Dex to pry his eyes open to look at him again. This time Nursey just looked defeated.

“Fine,” he said, and dropped his hand. Dex immediately missed it and immediately wanted to kick himself for it. “Go ahead.”

“Thank you,” Dex muttered. He took a deep breath of the too-warm autumn air and squinted at Nursey. “About last night...”

Nursey’s jaw went tight, like he was steeling himself for something and Dex hated himself in that moment, hated himself with an intensity that was startling, because Nursey was clearly trying so hard to be Chill about whatever nonsense he thought was coming and Dex _hated_ Nursey’s fake plastic Chill expression and he hated himself for putting it there.

It was so unlike his actual smile, that soft lazy curl of emotion that would creep across Nursey’s face when he was genuinely amused, or the bright laugh that would burst out of him when something took him by surprise.

“Dex?”

Dex realized with a jolt that he was staring and shook his head, instantly regretting the motion as the nausea leaped up his throat. He forced it back with sheer power of will and set his jaw stubbornly.

“Last night, I was really drunk,” he said and Nursey snorted.

“Uh, yeah,” he said and Dex held up a hand.

“I was really drunk,” he said again, pressing his fingers to his temple in an effort to stave off the headache. “And I don’t remember a bunch about the end of the night.”

“You didn’t really do--” Nursey began and Dex scowled at him.

“Damn it, Derek, would you just shut the hell up and let me talk?”

Nursey went still at the sound of his first name, slowly closing his mouth. He nodded.

“I don’t remember a bunch about the end of the night,” Dex repeated. He dropped his hand from his temple and looked at Nursey, trying to act like this wasn’t one of the most terrifying moments of his life. “But I remember you.”

Nursey blinked at him as around them, a breeze picked up, rustling the leaves in the trees and cooling the sweat at Dex’s brow.

“I remember you,” Dex said softly. He wasn’t Nursey – words were not his forte – but damn it, he could say this. He owed Nurse that much. “I remember you helping me upstairs.”

“You were pretty schwasted,” Nursey said and Dex couldn’t help the wry grin that crossed his face.

“Obviously.” He took a shallow, unsteady breath. “I remember deciding that I was gonna tell you. I was so fucking drunk I couldn’t remember a single reason why I hadn’t already told you, actually.”

“You did tell me,” Nursey said, and that expression crossed his face again, that painful ‘this-is-fine-everything’s-fine’ look that Dex couldn’t stand. Dex reached for him, barely even thinking the gesture through, clamping sweaty fingers around Nursey’s wrist.

“No,” Dex said hoarsely. “I didn’t.”

Nursey looked down at their clasped hands. “You said--”

“Nursey, I’m fucking in love with you.”

And there it was, out there in the world, the words almost physical with their weight. Nursey gaped at him and Dex squeezed his eyes shut, partially in deference to the now absolutely splitting headache, and partially so he wouldn’t have to look at whatever expression was about to cross Nursey’s face.

“I’m… yeah,” he said, voice rough. “That’s what I wanted to tell you last night. Drunk Me is just really really dumb.”

And it seemed that now that he’d started talking, he couldn’t stop. Words just kept pouring out of him, like someone had left the tap on full blast.

“I remember trying to think of all the reasons that I hadn’t told you, like that it could ruin our friendship and the team dynamic and you could totally hate me and chirp me about it for the rest of our natural born lives, but none of it seemed to matter last night when you were helping me upstairs and just-- everything about you, Nurse, _fuck_, you’re the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met and I can’t-- I just want to-- seriously, feel free to stop me anytime.”

“I dunno,” Nursey said, and Dex opened his eyes to see that he was grinning, a wide unabashed real expression that flipped Dex’s heart upside down in his chest. “I kinda wanna see where this goes.”

“Fuck you,” Dex croaked, but even as his heart sped up and his palms went clammy, he couldn’t help but return Nursey’s smile.

“Maybe later when you don’t look like you’re ten seconds from upchucking all over my shoes,” Nursey chirped and Dex groaned, tipping his head back and squeezing his eyes shut against the too-bright sun, even from behind his sunglasses.

“Nursey, you’re killing me,” he mumbled. “Seriously, you let me say all that and you’re not even gonna let me down before you start chirping me? I get that you’re stupid out of my league, but you don’t have to--”

“Dex,” Nursey said, suddenly serious and Dex looked back at him. The grin had slid from Nursey’s face. “Dex, what makes you think I’m out of your league?”

Dex snorted. “Where do I even begin? Have you seen yourself? You’re ridiculously, insanely hot, you’re funny, you’re brilliant, you’ve got all this--”

“Oh my god, Dex, stop.” Nursey reached for him, forcing Dex to drop his hold on his wrist, and put both blessedly cool palms against Dex’s cheeks, leaning in and resting their foreheads together. Dex went still.

“Dex, I’ve been into you forever,” Nursey murmured, close enough that Dex could feel the warm burst of his breath against his lips. “I figured that was sort of obvious.”

“You should know by now you really gotta spell this shit out for me,” Dex said, the words nearly automatic as liquid heat spread slowly through his veins, tingling at the ends of his fingertips.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Nursey said, warm and amused and Dex sagged against him.

“I think I’m gonna hurl,” he mumbled and Nursey snorted.

“Romantic as fuck, Poindexter, like always.” He stepped to Dex’s side and slid his arm around his waist, propping him up in a mirror image of their positioning the previous night.

Dex slipped his arm around Nursey’s waist in return, resting his fingers against his hip. “I chased you outside with the worst hangover I’ve ever had, doesn’t that say anything?”

“Yeah,” Nursey said softly, leaning over and pressing a feather-light kiss on Dex’s temple. “It really, really does.”  


  



End file.
